I’d arranged for Lance to be buried on Friday morning. The body had been transferred. The plot purchased. A little stone tablet would say Lancelot Carmichael, Brave Knight. Marked territory in Barrington and New York City, 2004-2017.

Just because Catherine didn’t want me wasn’t enough reason to insult Lance’s memory. And maybe I’d find a reason to knock on her door and see if she was home.

I flew into the landing strip outside town and took a cab into Doverton, where the club had a car for me. I didn’t tell the driver who I was or why I was there, sure that I was as anonymous as I’d always been. My life in Barrington had been in the shadows, behind hedges, forgotten and never known by anyone but the girl in the tree. The girl on my lips. Catherine of the Roses.

As we passed Barrington, I saw the roofline of the factory her father had owned. Nothing new had popped up. No new businesses or signs. Exactly the same.

I could have asked the driver to make the turn onto the factory service road. I could have walked over the bridge to her house or pulled right up to her front door.

---

---

The letter was so cold I could feel her effort to contain herself inside the page. I thought about why and knew it wasn’t anything as simple as another man. If there was someone, she’d invite me to dinner with him and we’d reminisce about everything but the way she gave me her body. There was more to it, and it was obvious. I’d written to her until I stopped. Those letters might have meant something to her, and I’d stopped because I needed a response she might not have been able to give. I’d abandoned her. I had no right to her. She wasn’t obligated to save me from a meaningless life I hated.

---

---

She was unequivocal, and she had me dead to rights. It had taken me four years to get out of the gutter and another two to make real money. I could have come to her a hundred times, but it was never enough. I was nursing some old wound where I wasn’t good enough. Never good enough.

So there I was. Not good enough because I’d waited too long to be good enough.

She was right there, over that little crest of land, behind the factory that had closed eleven years before.

Not waiting. I should have known. Why would she wait? It wasn’t long after I left that she started dating Frank Marshall, the best-dressed kid in our grade. I should have given up on her then, but I couldn’t.

I could go see her. Nothing was stopping me. She could tell me she didn’t want me to my face. She owed me that.

She didn’t.

Since Lance had been from Johnny’s litter, I left him a message with the details. I didn’t know if he’d even remember me.

The roses were being trimmed outside the club’s café. An older man with a floppy hat covering his brown skin was doing an efficient and more than adequate job of it. I went in for an early dinner and took a table overlooking the bushes. A few flowers braved the autumn temperatures. Even through the glass, I could hear the pock pock of tennis balls.

I was a paper cutout of a sixteen-year-old boy, sloppily taped onto the page of his life thirteen years later. Or maybe I was the hedge fund manager tripping into the scene of a play he’d starred in as a boy.

“Chris Carmichael?” A woman in a navy suit stood over me with my Coke. She put it in front of me and folded her hands in front of her. She had a blond bob and fresh red lipstick. She looked nothing like the girl I’d known when I worked the grounds, but I recognized her anyway.

“Marsha!” I stood and shook her hand. She pulled me forward and embraced me. I pulled out a chair for her, and she sat. “I didn’t think anyone would recognize me.”

“Well, I didn’t exactly,” she said. “I saw your name in the registration log.”

“Really?”

“I’m part owner here now, so I check it daily to make sure everything’s taken care of. I couldn’t believe it when I saw your name. How far you’ve come from biking all the way here from Barrington!”

“Yeah, and you.” I indicated the breadth of the club. “Part owner?”

She waved it away. “It was invest in something or starve.”

When we were kids, I’d thought people like Marsha had infinite resources, but as a man, I learned better. Anything could be lost.

“Good investment then.”

She put her elbows on the table and leaned over her folded hands. “What brings you back?”

I’d come for two reasons, and both sounded ridiculous when repeated.

“My dog died. He was born here, so I figured I’d bury him here. Up at Wild Horse Hill.”

“Aw, I’m so sorry.” Her eyes flicked to my left hand. She was looking for a ring. I saw hers. The diamond was the size of a gumball. “My daughter buried her bunny up there.”

“You have children?”

“Two by my first husband. Mattie and Oliver. You have any?”

“No.” The shortness of the answer begged for clarification. I had nothing to lose by making conversation, except time. “Never got around to finding the right woman.”

She laughed a derisive little laugh. “Had mine with the wrong man, but they turned out all right.” She slid open her phone. “You remember Mitch Whitney?”

“That asshole?”

He wasn’t an asshole. He was a solid guy who’d laugh at being called that.

“He’s my second husband, and the right one. Charles…you remember him?”

I nodded. He was a real asshole.

“He knocked me up in that pool house right over there.” She pointed out the window. The pool house wasn’t visible past the courts, but we both knew where it was. She handed me her phone. The wallpaper was of a family on a boat with fishing poles cutting the sky behind them. Her, a man our age, and two kids. “Figured what the hell, right? Well, he was an a-hole all right. Wouldn’t marry me. Said our son wasn’t his up until the last minute. Took me five years to leave him, and his family made it hard. But I got out.”

“And is this the new Mr. Marsha?”

Her face lit up like a Christmas tree, as if I’d brought up her favorite subject. I handed back her phone. “I met him and it was, like, I don’t know. You ever play piano?”

“No.”

“Well, I don’t know how else to describe it, so you’re going to have to live with it. You fight the metronome and then you get to this point where you feel the rhythm. And it’s easy. The song flows through you like it’s already there. That was what it was like the minute I laid eyes on Mitch. But you don’t play music, so you don’t know what that’s all about.”

“No, actually, I do.”

“You play something else?”

“No. But do you remember Catherine Barrington?”

“I do.”

It was too much to speak about. She’d nod sadly at my loss or we’d laugh about it.

“How is she?” I asked, sticking to the subject while I pretended to change it.

“Still living in that old house. Her dad closed the factory and died, I don’t know, maybe ten and change years ago? Their mother took off and left those girls.”

“What?” I had known the factory closed, but not the ugly personal details.

Marsha nodded. “The girls were of age and they had trust funds, but still. It was a tragedy. Catherine’s like a saint now. Selling everything to keep the people in that town afloat.”

Her letter got taut in my pocket, stretching the fabric to let me know it was there.

---

---

She’d needed me, and I’d let her down. I wasn’t worthy of her or a warm welcome.

“It’s her birthday, did you know?” Marsha said.

Did I? I knew it was in autumn because it was a few months after I left. It had taken me hours to find the right card and I’d skipped a meal to buy it. “I forgot.”

“One of the Barrington guys who fixes the AC mentioned there’s a party. You should show up.” She winked. “Might be like playing music.”